I like to think of architectural journalism as an extension of architectural practice. I've got a degree in architecture and spent a few years working in a design firm. More recently I've co-founded Harvard Design Magazine, acquired books for Princeton Architectural Press, and reported for periodicals like Architectural Record, Metropolis, I.D., Dwell, Graphis, and Landscape Architecture. I've written about architects in the movies for an anthology called Architecture and Film, and I'm currently collaborating on a book on the mid-century Cuban architect Mario Romanach.

I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which has (depending on your viewpoint) either a hyper-developed affection for traditional buildings or a hyper-developed distaste for contemporary architecture. If your tastes run to the new, as mine do, this can make for some aesthetic frustration. But it turns out that a centuries-old college town can be a good perch from which to get a perspective on a determinedly urbane, mostly metropolitan field in the midst of big changes — a field that's always wrestling with the question of how to balance new and old, and that's lately been struggling with the dilemma of how to make such solid and stable artifacts as buildings matter in a digital age, in a culture that's captivated by virtual worlds and ever on the lookout for the next big thing.

Architecture is at once the most public and least discussed of the arts, and arguably it's the least understood. For those of us who write about the field, this poses the challenge of suggesting how architectural forms and ideas are influenced by — and influence — the larger culture. It's a challenge I'll do my best to meet here at Arts Journal.

PIXEL POINTS

PIXEL POINTS homePIXEL POINTS archivesAbout Nancy Levinson I like to think of architectural journalism as an extension of architectural practice. MoreAbout Pixel Points Pixel Points is a reference to an influential magazine called Pencil PointsMore

PREFABPrefab seems always to be the next big thing—the solution to our chronic shortage of middle-class housing, a means to making contemporary design affordable. It's been around for a while, of course, from the "Modern Homes" that Sears, Roebuck sold via catalogue to Buckminster Fuller's curvy Dymaxion prototype to recent experiments in shipping-container chic. But lately there's been a lot to look at, and much of it's good-looking.

The LV Home, by the Chilean-born, Missouri-based architect Rocio Romero, is an effort to make "high-end modern design" not only affordable but unintimidating too. The kit-of-parts—basically the exterior shell—starts at $32,900, and Romero's web site features testimonials like this, from a Wisconsin homebuyer: "the closest I could ever get to the aesthetics of the Mies van der Rohe Plano house."

For the manufacturer Kannustalo, Ltd., the Finnish firm Heikkinen-Komonen Architects have created the Touch House. First exhibited at a housing fair, the 2,000-square-foot house hasn't been yet been widely marketed, which seems a shame.

Austrian architect Oskar Leo Kaufmann designed the SU-SI House in the mid-'90s, for his sister Suzy. A couple of years ago, the 1,400-square-foot house was constructed—or rather, assembled—on a rural site in Sullivan County, New York, for about $300,000, for a Manhattan photographer and his family.

Marmol Radziner Prefab, a division of the Los Angeles firm, designs "factory-made modules shipped ready to occupy." The architects, known for design/build work, both manufacture the modules and supervise construction. So far one house has been built, in Palm Springs—near Richard Neutra's Kaufmann House, which the firm restored—and a few more are underway. More

PRINT RUN

HOUSESSome mostly recent books on houses, some posh, some not.

The Green HouseAuthors Alanna Stang and Christopher Hawthorne argue that green design is not just ecologically responsible but also high style— "camera ready." They make a good case, using projects like Georg Driendl's Solar Tube, in Vienna, Brian MacKay-Lyons's Howard House, in Nova Scotia, and Lahz Nimmo's Casuarina Beach House, in northern New South Wales.

The Very Small HomeThe subtitle says it: "Japanese Ideas for Living Well in Limited Space." Author Azby Brown has compiled a collection of houses most of which are so diminutive they'd fit into the master bath of a McMansion. These include Tadao Ando's austere 4 x 4 House, just 243 s.f., and Architecture Lab's White Box House, a comparatively roomy 559 s.f.

David Adjaye HousesA handsome monograph featuring a dozen of the houses that have made Adjaye a rising star of London architecture. These include Elektra House and Dirty House, plus the residences he's designed for Ewan McGregor and Chris Ofili.